Keeping Company
by cas-the-unicorn
Summary: Sometimes, the dead need people to keep them company, too. Stiles understands that. Rated T for mentions of character death.


Ever since his mom died, Stiles had kept her company.

He'd sit by her gravestone in Beacon Hills cemetery and just talk.

For the first few months, it was apologies. Apologies for not finding a way to save her, for being the reason her last weeks were filled with fear, for being so selfish that he wished every day that she had suffered a little longer, so he could have had his mother a few more days.

But one day, he couldn't be sad for her.

He ran all the way from school to see her, holding a paper marked with an "A+" in his hand.

"Mom! Mom look at this!" He held the paper up to the concrete stone. "I finally understand math! I got an A+! Look, do you see?" His smile faltered for a moment. "Well, you probably can't, since some person thousands of years ago thought it would be logical to cover dead bodies with dirt, but I bet you can tell."

Stiles sat down cross-legged in front of his mother's grave stone. "I just wish you were here to see it."

After that, their one-sided conversations became more frequent, and less formal. He would see her most days after school and tell her about his day - how Scott's mom trusted him with a backup inhaler for Scott, what colour dress Lydia Martin was wearing and how it brought out the green in her eyes or the red in her hair, which teachers had yelled at him for his jumpiness.

He made sure she knew when he stopped having panic attacks so often, so she wouldn't be worried about him.

It was like she had never left.

Even when Scott was bitten, when Lydia was attacked, and when they found out that Jackson was the Kanima, he still kept Claudia up to date on everything.

Until Donovan.

A few days after the incident in the library, Stiles found himself standing in front of the entrance of the cemetary. But he couldn't make himself go in.

 _Should I really tell my mother how I murdered someone a few days ago?_

He stood below the arch for what seemed like hours to him, debating whether he should burden his mother with the fact that her son was a murderer.

When he finally did walk in, he turned right instead of left.

The grave he arrived at was not his mother's, but someone who he knew would understand his actions.

Someone who's death was so painful that no funeral was held, and no one had ever visited her in the many months that she had been buried.

But the conversation took a different turn than he had intended.

"I'm so sorry, Allison."

A soft winter breeze ruffled his hair, and he tugged his coat closers to him as he stared at the barren patch of grass before him.

"I'm sorry that I was weak enough to let him in. You and Scott got past that darkness like warriors, and I ended up hosting a dark spirit that put a stain on this town. I'm sorry that I didn't do more to stop him, and that I caused you so much pain."

A sob escaped him, quickly covered up by his hand.

"Im sorry I killed you, Ally."

He turned around and ran the whole way home.

For the whole rest of that week, Stiles acted differently. He wasn't energetic, he didn't call out answers, he didn't smile at Scott's jokes - he just stared blankly at the air in front of him.

It's not like it hadn't happened before. He tended to become a different, unemotional person in times like these. After his mom died, after the Nogistune was expelled, and, more so than usual, after Lydia was injured by Tracy. Scott and Lydia always worried about him, but they knew that they couldn't do anything to help. They had to let him work it out by himself.

And he always did.

This time it took three days, but he eventually made his way back to the cemetery.

"I'm sorry for bailing on you the other day. I didn't mean to say that stuff. I mean, of course I'm sorry, I will always be sorry, but I sort of wanted your help on something."

He sat down next to the gravestone and chuckled. "Now that I say out loud it sounds really selfish, but you are the only one who could understand. You were a hunter - you fought the bad guys, with no powers at your disposal, and you had to sometimes live in the grey parts of life to do that. You understand - understood, whatever - that life isn't always all black and white. You knew that everything we do, everything our pack deals with, is in shades of grey."

He sighed. "That's why I can't tell Scott this. He thinks of the entire world in terms of good guys and bad guys, black and white, everything in two distinct categories. And Lydia, she's dealt with some serious shit, but I don't know if I could deal with her looking at me like I'm some - some villain. I can't deal with that. Malia would probably understand, but she would understand it as someone who has no moral compass in situations like this.

"I did something, Allison." Stiles swallowed the lump in his throat. "Something bad. I keep telling myself that it couldn't have been avoided, but who am I kidding?"

Taking a deep breath, he finally let it out, saying, "I was outside the school, fixing my Jeep, and Donovan, the crazy chimera with weird-ass teethy mouths all over his fucking body, attacked me. I hit him with a wrench and ran inside the library, and then he started bad-mouthing my dad, saying he was a coward, threatening the two of us, all that. I was hiding behind a bookcase, since obvious I'm not that great a fighter, and he found me and I climbed up some of the construction that's going on in there and pulled out one of the pieces that keeps the structure together at the top. I thought that one of the poles or something would just hit him in the head and knock him down, or that they would at least distract him, but..."

Stiles took a deep breath and put a hand over his mouth. "One of them went straight through his chest. I tried to help once I saw it, but he growled at me, I'm not kidding, he fucking growled, and then he just died."

He folded his arms on the top of the gravestone and laid his head on them.

"I killed a kid, Ally. He may have been an asshole, but he was just a kid. Had it been anyone else, they would have found some other way to stop him, or at least to get away. How the hell do I get over that? How do I go home after this and look my father in the face, knowing that I murdered a teenage boy not two weeks ago? How do I stand up to Scott's puppy dog eyes, always trying to find the best in people, and say that I broke on of most important rules? Fuck, how do I even attempt to look at Lydia?"

Stiles sniffed. "I know you can't comfort me, I know that. You're dead, your body in a coffin that I might as well have bought for you. I don't even know why I came out here, but thank you. For listening to me, no matter how unwillingly, and for giving me someone to lean on in situations like this. Hopefully there won't be anymore situations like this, because situations like this are bad, and I'd rather not find myself in anymore situations like this, and now I'm rambling, but thank you."

He stood up. "Bye, Allison."

He put a hand out to rest on the stone, but pulled it back. Instead he crossed his arms and walked back to the path leading to his car.

After that, talks with Allison became more common. For a while it was apologies, then came the thank you's, and finally just normal one-sided conversations. He would stop by most days on his drive back from school and tell her about his day - how Scott almost died, how Lydia was in Eichen, how Stiles so heroically saved her, how Theo was still being an ass.

He was sure to drop by right away after Malia broke up with him. Apparently, the sexual tension whenever he and Lydia looked at each other made her want to claw her eyes out, or something like that.

He practically skipped to her patch of newly-flowering grass when he came to tell her about he and Lydia's first date, which sadly ended in a fire department spraying their table down.

He still visited his mom, but not as often as he had before. His mom had Stiles, his dad, and her entire family to visit her. Allison had only ever been talked to by him. Her own family was either dead or God knows where, the love of her life was now in a serious relationship with another girl, and her best friend had multiple problems of her own to deal with.

Stiles would never forget his mom, ever.

But he knew she would understand. She was that awesome.

So, Stiles kept Allison company.

Even two years later, when he and Lydia got married, he kept her company.

Even three years later, when he and Scott became fathers of baby girls on the same night, he kept her company.

Through every new baby, every drama, every enemy, every fight, every make up, Stiles kept Allison company.

He did until the day he and Lydia died in a battle with another pack at 27 years old, orphaning their six and two year-old children and destroying the happiness of their best friends.

He kept her company after that, too. Eventually the pack had the graves of all their loved ones relocated to a secluded part of the cemetary where only they would visit, to keep the pain of lost loved ones and mourned friends hidden. With his wife on his right, his mother behind him, and her on his left, Stiles Stilinski kept Allison Argent company.


End file.
